A few days ago, I came across an intriguing piece of research on sea lion behaviour. The animal was given the choice between two plates of food, one with five fish, the other only two fish.

If the plate with five fish was chosen, the sea lion was rewarded with only two fish to eat. However, if it chose the plate of two fish, then it would be rewarded with five fish.

Not only did the sea lion learn which plate to choose but it surprised researchers by generalising the result – given the choice between two plates with different numbers of fish, it would choose the smaller. This was more impressive than most apes could manage.

A chimpanzee can pick two pieces of food rather than five but it will not generalise the result to different numbers.

So are sea lions brighter than chimps or has their fish-catching evolution given them a specific advantage in food selection intelligence?

Psychologists have long pondered such matters and animal behaviour in general has become a popular area for research.

Ben Ambridge’s book offers a high-speed romp through remarkably diverse findings that go beyond mere intelligence to explore strange discoveries about animal personality, sexuality, compulsiveness and other aspects of behaviour including the “Monty Hall problem”.